The aim is to provide you with both a strong theoretical understanding and a practical grasp of global strategic management. In this course, you will apply the theoretical insights to challenging case studies and group assignments which serve to create a thorough foundation for dealing with strategic management issues in an international context.

The course intends to extend your understanding of defining and assessing the quality of a firm’s international competitive strategy. Nurturing a sound understanding of the fundamental principles and concepts inherent to global strategic management should help you formulate, evaluate and implement strategies which help firms gain competitive advantage. The course emphasizes practical application of theory. This is sought through active utilization of theories to solve real world company issues. The strong emphasis on practical application is further enhanced by guest lectures from top managers of leading multinational firms.

This course intends to give an overview of all essential aspects of global strategic management with a strong emphasis on application of theory. It is assumed that students read the provided theoretical material (readings) and come to class prepared to discuss the boundaries of theories as well the limits to their application in certain business contexts.

The course is built around the four broad strategic issues facing international business managers;
 

(1) Whether to diversify the organization’s activities across different countries and/or regions?

(2) Where (in which specific geographic markets) should the organization compete? A geographic market can be conceptualized as a collection of buyers and sellers doing business in a specific geographic location.

(3) What form(s) should the organization’s international business activities take?

(4) When should the organization enter or exit a given geographic market?

We will be discussing each of these four broad issues and why these questions, although relevant also for managers in domestic businesses, are particularly important in the context of international business. While not required, a good basic understanding of international business theory and economics is an advantage.

Drawing upon the three specific theoretical perspectives; (1) environmental-level institutional theory, (2) firm-level resource-based perspective, and (3) activity-level transaction cost economics, this course seeks to integrate current understanding in the IB literature into a consistent and coherent framework for managerial decision-making. Location is of particular importance since location influences the extent to which institutional features, accessible resources and transaction costs directly or indirectly influence the outcomes of international business activities, and thus help to focus the decision-making process underlying IB strategy. In other words, locations differ in important ways one from another in their institutions, resource endowments and attributes influencing transaction costs, and the differences influence organizational decisions about whether, where, what and when to participate in international business transactions. Furthermore, international business experience in specific locations affects the capabilities of organizations to undertake specific business activities in other locations. In short, location is at the heart of our model of IB strategy through its influence on the broad environment surrounding international business activities, as well as its impact, over time, on the capabilities of organizations to undertake business activities in different countries and regions.

The main objective of this course is to give students a thorough understanding of these three theoretical perspectives and their linkage to the concept of location, as well as to present empirical evidence on the importance and relevance of our conceptual model to the four IB strategy questions identified above. In short, we strive to reduce the complexity of the existing IB strategy literature and synthesize a number of theoretical concepts into one integrated framework that can address the four main IB strategy questions most pertinent to managers and decision-makers in MNCs.